As an addendum to note 12, I'm surprised you didn't mention the most radical geographer of all time, Pol Pot, who taught Geography in a private elite school in Phnom Penh during the 1950's.
I am a little surprised to be described as “surprised”! Certainly, it is no longer surprising—if indeed it ever was—that there are those on the far right who want less participation from women in professional life. This has been growing for several years, and of course it also taps into an anti-feminism from evangelical Christians that is decades old.
I am aware that you’re more sympathetic than I am to these kinds of currents, and I appreciate your perspective, though you should expect that at least some of the writings that you throw out in a neutral or approving fashion will be repurposed by me as targets! I trust you’ll not resent the disagreement.
Rights, as a social construction, are far from nonsense these days. I think they’ve shown themselves to be a powerful tool for ordering society in a way that doesn’t just serve the interests of the powerful. But you should interpret both my most recent pieces as locating rights downstream of a broader idea of good, instead of considering them fundamental.
As for feminism, I think the internal disagreements have always been healthy! The fundamental notion that women are people is necessarily dependent upon an understanding of what it means to be a person. That’s a hard question; disagreements will naturally follow even as areas of agreement also emerge. I’d much rather have competing perspectives that start with a sincere attempt at answering what it would mean to respect and support women than have a unified movement that can’t address its foundations. Indeed, my main complaints about modern feminism centre on the way it sometimes resembles the latter.
I appreciate the disagreement, but I object to the idea that any pushback against the various policies promoted in the name of “empowering women” (including firing men for citing mainstream social science research) must somehow be associated with the “far right”.
As for rights being “far from nonsense these days”, what do rights mean for minorities in China? I question the idea that there is currently a shared understanding of the good that can support the idea of individual rights on a global basis, or even within nominally liberal societies, where young men and women seem to be developing divergent conceptions of it.
I am not saying that all pushback against policies promoted in the name of empowering women must be associated with the far right. I will also freely concede that there are places in the world where the concept of rights is not especially strong. Nonetheless, I do think that rights remain a powerful concept in liberal societies, including in situations where "rights" are claimed as a reason in both sides of a debate. Abortion debates, for example, often centre on competing claims of the "right to life" of the developing fetus and the "right to bodily autonomy" of the pregnant person. There is disagreement as to which rights exist and/or should take precedence, but this only further emphasises that the concept of a right remains strong.
The concept of a right remains strong, but I don’t think we can reach an optimal outcome if every group is only interested in protecting their rights at all costs. I feel that much of the criticism of Andrews ignored the fact that there has indeed been an erosion of e.g. the right to freedom of speech at the same time as women have gained influence in many fields. It’s in this context that I question the continued relevance of feminism as it does not seem to offer a way of adjudicating between clashing rights.
Suppose, however, that we start with the notion that the system of “rights” is frequently protecting important things. If we wish to adjudicate between those things in cases of competing rights, then we will need to understand, as much as possible, what was important about them and why. Likewise, if we discard rights entirely, we will need to understand the work the concept was doing and think about how to preserve what was important about it.
Existing feminist theory is built more closely around “rights” than most strains of thought, in part due to its comparative recency. If we wish to either look beyond rights or move away from them, then it will be particularly important to be able to translate the underlying concerns behind “women’s rights” into alternate moral language. This will require more feminist inquiry!
Of course, some people who reject “rights” also reject the idea that feminism was ever fighting for anything important. For those people, the problem must seem much easier: just get this “rights” language out of the way and the real truth of women’s rightful subjection will emerge without any of the feminist baggage preventing men and women from seeing that it was right all along. Needless to say, I don’t agree with these people! I am critically interested in the question of “What are “women’s rights” doing that is important, and to what extent can we be flexible without losing sight of what matters about feminism?”
In short, my awareness of some inadequacies in “rights” as a complete system of understanding make me more inclined to work on feminist theory, not less. (In companion with this, I also want to continue to support rights as a political idea—not least because they are one of the most powerful ways to support free inquiry, as your invocation of speech rights indicates.)
I’d have no problem with that, except that I feel that this is what we’ve been doing for a very long time now and it no longer seems to be working. Developing a more sophisticated theology is of no use if nobody goes to church
Got an alternate strategy? Because I kind of think that anything that doesn’t start with trying to see what is important to the people involved is liable to be even less helpful!
As an addendum to note 12, I'm surprised you didn't mention the most radical geographer of all time, Pol Pot, who taught Geography in a private elite school in Phnom Penh during the 1950's.
I am a little surprised to be described as “surprised”! Certainly, it is no longer surprising—if indeed it ever was—that there are those on the far right who want less participation from women in professional life. This has been growing for several years, and of course it also taps into an anti-feminism from evangelical Christians that is decades old.
I am aware that you’re more sympathetic than I am to these kinds of currents, and I appreciate your perspective, though you should expect that at least some of the writings that you throw out in a neutral or approving fashion will be repurposed by me as targets! I trust you’ll not resent the disagreement.
Rights, as a social construction, are far from nonsense these days. I think they’ve shown themselves to be a powerful tool for ordering society in a way that doesn’t just serve the interests of the powerful. But you should interpret both my most recent pieces as locating rights downstream of a broader idea of good, instead of considering them fundamental.
As for feminism, I think the internal disagreements have always been healthy! The fundamental notion that women are people is necessarily dependent upon an understanding of what it means to be a person. That’s a hard question; disagreements will naturally follow even as areas of agreement also emerge. I’d much rather have competing perspectives that start with a sincere attempt at answering what it would mean to respect and support women than have a unified movement that can’t address its foundations. Indeed, my main complaints about modern feminism centre on the way it sometimes resembles the latter.
I appreciate the disagreement, but I object to the idea that any pushback against the various policies promoted in the name of “empowering women” (including firing men for citing mainstream social science research) must somehow be associated with the “far right”.
As for rights being “far from nonsense these days”, what do rights mean for minorities in China? I question the idea that there is currently a shared understanding of the good that can support the idea of individual rights on a global basis, or even within nominally liberal societies, where young men and women seem to be developing divergent conceptions of it.
I am not saying that all pushback against policies promoted in the name of empowering women must be associated with the far right. I will also freely concede that there are places in the world where the concept of rights is not especially strong. Nonetheless, I do think that rights remain a powerful concept in liberal societies, including in situations where "rights" are claimed as a reason in both sides of a debate. Abortion debates, for example, often centre on competing claims of the "right to life" of the developing fetus and the "right to bodily autonomy" of the pregnant person. There is disagreement as to which rights exist and/or should take precedence, but this only further emphasises that the concept of a right remains strong.
The concept of a right remains strong, but I don’t think we can reach an optimal outcome if every group is only interested in protecting their rights at all costs. I feel that much of the criticism of Andrews ignored the fact that there has indeed been an erosion of e.g. the right to freedom of speech at the same time as women have gained influence in many fields. It’s in this context that I question the continued relevance of feminism as it does not seem to offer a way of adjudicating between clashing rights.
Suppose, however, that we start with the notion that the system of “rights” is frequently protecting important things. If we wish to adjudicate between those things in cases of competing rights, then we will need to understand, as much as possible, what was important about them and why. Likewise, if we discard rights entirely, we will need to understand the work the concept was doing and think about how to preserve what was important about it.
Existing feminist theory is built more closely around “rights” than most strains of thought, in part due to its comparative recency. If we wish to either look beyond rights or move away from them, then it will be particularly important to be able to translate the underlying concerns behind “women’s rights” into alternate moral language. This will require more feminist inquiry!
Of course, some people who reject “rights” also reject the idea that feminism was ever fighting for anything important. For those people, the problem must seem much easier: just get this “rights” language out of the way and the real truth of women’s rightful subjection will emerge without any of the feminist baggage preventing men and women from seeing that it was right all along. Needless to say, I don’t agree with these people! I am critically interested in the question of “What are “women’s rights” doing that is important, and to what extent can we be flexible without losing sight of what matters about feminism?”
In short, my awareness of some inadequacies in “rights” as a complete system of understanding make me more inclined to work on feminist theory, not less. (In companion with this, I also want to continue to support rights as a political idea—not least because they are one of the most powerful ways to support free inquiry, as your invocation of speech rights indicates.)
I’d have no problem with that, except that I feel that this is what we’ve been doing for a very long time now and it no longer seems to be working. Developing a more sophisticated theology is of no use if nobody goes to church
Got an alternate strategy? Because I kind of think that anything that doesn’t start with trying to see what is important to the people involved is liable to be even less helpful!